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Wednesday, 7 January 2015

DETROIT AFTER BANKRUPTCY: A CASE OF DEGROWTH MACHINE POLITICS

Seth Schindler

Department of Geography, University of Sheffield

My
recent article entitled Detroit after bankruptcy: A case of degrowth machine politics focuses on urban governance in the context of the city’s
longstanding crisis. It examines a coalition among some of the city’s civic and
political leaders that emerged after the city declared bankruptcy in 2013. The
main argument is that this coalition envisions a future for the city whose
emphasis is on making the city liveable rather than rejuvenating its
manufacturing base. This has fostered a freedom to imagine the future and
experiment with policy not seen in Detroit for years, and it demonstrates that
crises do not necessarily result in the intensification of neoliberalism.

As a native DetroiterI have watched with interest
the growing scholarly and media attention paid to the city. Hardly a week
passes in which a major news outlet does not publish a collection of photos
documenting the city’s crumbling
built environment. I wrote this article in an effort to
counter some commonly held assumptions about Detroit’s relationship with ‘cause
and effect’ neoliberalism. Indeed, it is commonly assumed that the city was
plunged into crisis by neoliberalism, and that the crisis has resulted in the
intensification of neoliberalism. Instead, Detroit’s crisis dates back to the
1960s and I argue that its bankruptcy represents a failure of neoliberalism. The
city’s longstanding crisis has shaped the lives of Detroiters for decades. It
determined their occupations and life courses, depending on their skin colour
and class. People have responded in ways that produced the sprawling
metropolitan area with deep divisions (i.e. moving to suburbs in successive
waves). The border separating city from suburb is marked by 8 Mile, a wound
that is etched into the geography of the city and is emblematic of the decline
of the great American city. It demarcates the city, as both a frontier and
threat that must be contained. This narrative of containment looms large in the
imagination of suburbanites. For as long as I can remember, there was a
perception among suburbanites that Detroit was in terminal decline, and that
this decline threatened to spread like a cancer and engulf the inner suburbs. The
answer for working-class whites was to stay one step ahead and move farther
north.

Many
European-Americans who began their lives as factory workers in the heyday of
Fordist manufacturing moved to northern suburbs in the 1960s. Their children
followed suit and moved farther north and their own children now work in the
tertiary sector. Many Metro Detroiters have a love-hate relationship with
Detroit. Indeed, the word ‘Detroit’ conjures up feelings of nostalgia,
reverence, fear, hope, guilt and resignation. These complex feelings are a
result of the city’s decades-long decline, of which the 2008 crisis was only
the latest chapter. The municipal government was already faced with a shrinking
tax base and ballooning debt when the financial crisis began. It was clear to
everyone that borrowing money to simply keep the traffic lights on and the
city’s ambulances limping along was untenable. The question was who would take
the financial loss when the city finally declared bankruptcy? Common wisdom
among urban scholars is that neoliberalism is intensified during times of
crisis, and in a neoliberal regime the public sector assumes risk while the
private sector reaps rewards. Ultimately extra-local bondholders failed to
recoup the lion’s share of their investment, and this is why Detroit’s
bankruptcy represents the failure of neoliberalism. By declaring bankruptcy the
city was able to shed some of its crippling debt, and this has allowed local
civic and political leaders to re-envision the city’s future.

Urban transformation
interrupted in the wake of the financial crisis

I
hope that this article makes us think critically about neoliberalism and cities
in crisis. In the case of Detroit local leaders have recognized that further
degrowth is likely. They have articulated a plan that acknowledges the end of
Fordist manufacturing in the city, and instead focuses on quality of life
issues. It also aims to construct ‘blue’ and ‘green’ infrastructure and make
the Detroit one of America’s greenest cities. This transition is scheduled to
take five decades, and indeed, it necessitates difficult choices and trade-offs.
It would be illogical not to recognize the very real fiscal constraints faced
by the municipal government and to simply dismiss any and all budget cuts as
evidence of intensified neoliberalism. Ultimately this article demonstrates
that we need a more nuanced understanding of how crises unfold in cities that
have been in decline for decades. It is unclear why policy makers in these
cities would turn to out-of-the-box neoliberal policies since no amount of fiscal
austerity is likely to jumpstart economic growth. This explains why these
cities may be fertile ground for the emergence of degrowth machine politics.
Depending on what happens in Detroit, local political and civic leaders in
other cities may view bankruptcy as a viable way to escape unrealistic
financial burdens imposed by extra-local bondholders. Bankruptcy is just one
option that is related to a more fundamental question in Detroit and a host of
other cities whose degrowth seems inevitable: how can degrowth be managed
equitably in ways that make cities liveable?

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Urban Studies is the leading interdisciplinary journal for critical urban research and issues. Since it was first published in 1964 to provide an international forum for research into the fields of urban and regional studies, the journal has expanded to encompass the increasing range of disciplines and approaches that have been brought to bear on urban and regional issues